1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to serial link transceivers.
2. Description of Related Art
As depicted in FIG. 1, a prior art serial link transceiver 100 comprises a receiver 110 and a transmitter 120 for performing a receiving and a transmitting function, respectively. The receiver 110 comprises a clock-data recovery (CDR) circuit 102 for receiving an incoming signal RX_IN and outputting a recovered data RX_DATA signal and a recovered clock signal RX_CLK. The transmitter 120 comprises: a clock-multiplying unit (CMU) 124 for receiving a reference clock signal REF_CLK generated by an external crystal oscillator 130 and outputting a derived clock signal TX_CLK; and a modulator 126 for receiving the derived clock signal TX_CLK and an outgoing data signal TX_DATA and outputting an outgoing signal TX_OUT. The receiver 110 and the transmitter 120 operate in separate clock domains. The receiver recovers the clocking embedded in the incoming signal RX_IN and operates in accordance with the recovered clock signal RX_CLK. The transmitter operates in accordance with the reference clock signal REF_CLK generated by the crystal oscillator 130. Due to the high quality factor of the crystal oscillator, the timing of the reference clock is highly accurate and stable under environmental temperature drift. However, crystal oscillators are expensive and not typically considered amenable to integration in modern integrated circuit technology.